It was a clear, cool October night that Dorothy and Bobbie had their first serious talk about it. His horse was hitched to the post waiting for him, and Dorothy had come out on the porch to say good-bye. The moon shone clear and bright, softening the shadows cast by the great trees on the lawn, and all the air was full of the sweet, fall fragrance which belongs to that season of the year. Bobbie was holding his hat in his hand, idly twirling it as he talked, to hide the excitement he could scarce repress. “Father says,” and they began to walk up and down the veranda, “father says if the State secedes, he will organize a troop of cavalry at once, and I will of course join him. Your father will be our surgeon, and you—has your father said anything about it to you, Dorothy?” he asked abruptly, taking her hand and drawing it through his arm and holding it there tightly. “Has he mentioned any of his possible plans to you?” “Yes,” she answered slowly, “yes, he has talked with me of every possibility. I am to go to your mother in case there is any necessity. Auntie will go to the city, so as to be near the hospitals, and you—and father—and everybody I love will be in that horrible, cruel thing! Ah, Bobbie, why must it happen—why cannot it be stopped?” and she shivered in dread apprehension of the days that were awaiting her. Bobbie answered her seriously and solemnly, “I would to Heaven it could, but if not, you would not have me stay?” “No,” she said, raising her head quickly. “I would not have you stay even if it broke my heart to have you go. I did not know how much I loved my South until now, when I must give up all I love most for it. I pray God to help me—to make me brave—but sometimes I’m afraid I’m a coward; but of course you must go, and who knows but I may yet have a major, or a colonel, or a brigadier-general for a husband?” and she tried to laugh bravely at the thought. “You shall have one who is every inch a Southern soldier,” he said, taking the upturned face in his hands. “And I can have nothing greater than that,” she added proudly, and the moon rested lovingly for a moment on their bent heads, and only the winds heard the vows they made to be true to their cause—come what may, come what might. CHAPTER VI. Such a short, hurried time, it seemed afterwards, before everything was decided, all preparations made, and all the great changes, which at first they thought would only prove temporary, settled down to a permanent thing. The neighborhood, once so gay and bright and full of all that makes life worth the living, was turned into a kind of camping ground or recruiting station, and “White Point” was the nucleus around which everything centered.